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There are very legitimate reasons to be scared that the proliferation of video surveillance is rapidly encroaching on our rights to everyday privacy and anonymity on the streets of Baltimore. Spurred on by counter-terrorism paranoia, recent advances in camera technology and computerized image processing are bringing George Orwell’s dystopian nightmare of inescapable social control within reach of today’s bureaucrats.

On Friday, August 2nd, 2013, Arun Gupta came to Baltimore for two events: "The Importance of Independent Media" and "The United States of Fear." Gupta argues a path forward towards directly challenging the types of fear the state, corporations, and police use to repress the population, including: identifying our fears, having honest dialogue, and build real relationships and communities of trust and solidarity.

When a calll went out in early October to “occupy” Baltimore, roughly 200 people gathered to discuss possible locations for an encampment. One initial proposal was to occupy the site of a proposed youth jail in East Baltimore, a facility that would cost the state $104 million—money that could be used for an under-funded public education system and neglected recreation centers.

In The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, author Stiegg Larson introduces us to the twenty-first century's first great traumatized protagonist, Lisbeth Salander. Called the “perfect victim” by one of her friends, she is a private investigator who faces all kinds of abuse from men in her life, men who hate women in general and her in particular. At a young age, she watched her father regularly and viciously abuse her mother.

Throughout American history, landjacking has often been accompanied by violence, whether physical or structural. The James Cameron blockbuster movie Avatar illustrated how corporate interests use naked force as they attempted to landjack the home of the Na’vi, the indigenous population on the planet Pandora. What Avatar masterfully depicts are the methods that avaricious developers or corporation interests will use in order to extract resources and maximize profits.